What strikes the most in Tum Mile is the way in which a love story is told against the backdrop of a natural calamity. What fails to cut an edge, however, is how the calamity itself, the 26/7 deluge of Mumbai in 2005, has been depicted. The fateful day when the maximum city sank under waist-deep water, when thousands of aam Mumbaikars were stranded between hell and high water, has not been recreated to the most bone-chilling effect. But then, ‘Tum Mile’ never claimed to document the calamity. At its core, the film is a love story, and at that level it surely does work. The film tells the story of two estranged lovers who meet again after a gap of six years amidst a natural disaster. Sanjana (Soha Ali Khan) and Akshay (Emraan Hashmi) bump into each other on a plane to Mumbai. The two share a past which neither seems to have forgotten and as the evening ticks on they find themselves stuck in the middle of a flooded Mumbai. The narrative keeps slipping into flashbacks to create a parallel track of how the two fell in love and then fell apart. In Cape Town, Akshay, an art student living hand to mouth, fell for a rich girl, Sanjana. The yawning gap between their social standing didn’t prevent the two from falling in love and living in together. But soon the cracks in the relationship began to appear as Sanjana foot the basic bills of the house, while an out-of-work Akshay twiddled his thumbs and grappled with his male abhimaan of being a liability on Sanjana. A separation inevitably follows. Six years later, as the two stick together to navigate a flooded city, will they rediscover their lost love?
After his directorial debut Jannat, director Kunal Deshmukh weaves another love story that pulls a few strings at heart. Jumbling up the two contrasting tracks - one in the scenic Cape Town (beautifully captured by Prakash Kutty's camera) and the other in a deluged Mumbai - he spins a moving yarn that never lets your interest wane during the two and quarter hours of the movie’s running time. Pritam’s hummable tunes are added bonus.
But it is the lead pair of Emraan and Soha that impress the most with their nuanced performances. Bringing a certain edge to his character without ever overplaying it, Emraan does fine as Akshay, while Soha lends a sophistication to her Sanjana, a shade of which retains in the character even in the moments of panic.
The special effects may be tacky and the film at times resorts to obvious clichés like the hero saving a kid or the images of human chains, water-logged roads et al. But at its heart, ‘Tum Mile’ is a touching love saga worth the price of a ticket
